How to Monitor Interventions Effectively: Lessons from PRISMA’s Intervention in the Mungbean Sector in Indonesia

Monitoring is the ‘unsung hero’ of results measurement.  Planned carefully, and implemented wisely, it can provide a wealth of benefits for programs at modest cost.

Monitoring provides invaluable information to program teams to manage and adjust interventions, improve sector strategies and design post-intervention assessments. The understanding gained from monitoring helps to improve results and report regularly to donors on program progress.  Yet, monitoring is often taken for granted leading to insufficient information for decision-making and/or expending resources unnecessarily.  This paper illustrates how to monitor both effectively and efficiently using the case of an intervention from the PRISMA program in Indonesia.  The paper provides practical tips for addressing eight common monitoring challenges the PRISMA team encountered.  It also highlights useful practices the team developed during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions which can increase monitoring efficiency in the future.  The paper outlines how the PRISMA team used monitoring information in management and closes with broadly applicable lessons learned.